Lost Boys Read Free Page B

boys, one for Betsy and the new baby when it came in July, and one for Step's office, because they still hoped he could do some programming on the side and then they could go back to living the way they wanted to, and in a better place than this.
    In the meantime, the movers had piled the living room six feet high with more boxes than they could ever unpack and put away in a place this size, and they had a single weekend to get settled before work started for Step and school started for Stevie. Monday, the deadline, the drop-dead day. Nobody was looking forward to it with much joy, least of all Stevie.
    DeAnne was aware of Stevie's anxiety all through the weekend of moving in and unpacking. Stevie mostly tended Robbie and Elizabeth, except when Step or DeAnne called for him to run some errand from one end of the house to the other. As always, Stevie was quiet and helpful- he took his responsibilities as the eldest child very seriously.
    Or maybe he just seemed serious, because he kept his feelings to himself until he had sorted them out, or until they had built up to a point where he couldn't contain them. So DeAnne knew that it was a real worry for him when he came into the kitchen and stood there silently for a long time until she said, "Want to tell me something or am I just too pretty for words?" which was what she always said, only he didn't smile, he just stood there a moment more and then he said, "Mom, can't I just stay home for another couple of days?"
    "Stevie, I know it's scary, but you just need to plunge right in. You'll make friends right away and everything'll be fine."
    "I didn't make friends right away at my old school."
    That was true enough-DeAnne remembered the consultations with Stevie's kindergarten teacher. Stevie didn't really play with anybody until November of that year, and he didn't have any actual friends until first grade. If it weren't for his friends at church, DeAnne would have worried that Stevie was too socially immature for school. But with the kids at church he was almost wild sometimes, running around the meeting- house like a movie-western Indian until Step intervened and gathered him up and brought him to the car. No, Stevie knew how to play, and he knew ho w to make friends. He just didn't make friends easily. He wasn't like Robbie, who would walk up and talk to anybody, kid or adult. Of course Stevie was worried about school. DeAnne was worried for him, too.
    "But that was your first school ever," she said. "You know the routine now."
    "When Barry Wimmer moved in after Thanksgiving," he said, "everybody was really rotten to him."
    "Were you?"
    "No."
    "So not everybody"
    "They made fun of everything he did," said Stevie.
    "Kids can be like that sometimes."
    "They're going to do that to me now," said Stevie.
    This was excruciating. She wanted to say, You're right, they're going to be a bunch of little jerks, because that's the way kids are at that age, except you, because you were born not knowing how to hurt anybody else, you were born with compassion, only that also means that when people are cruel to you it cuts you deep. You won't understand that you have to walk right up to the ones who are being hateful and laugh in their faces and earn their respect. Instead you'll try to figure out what you did to make them mad at you.
    For a moment she toyed with putting it to him in exactly those terms. But it would hardly help him if she confirmed all his worst fears. He'd never get to sleep if she did that.
    "What if they were unkind to you, Stevie? What would you do?"
    He thought about that for a while. "Barry cried," he said.
    "Did that make it better?"
    "No," said Stevie. "They made fun of him crying. Ricky followed him around saying 'boo hoo hoo' all the time from then on. He was still doing it on my last day there."
    "So," said DeAnne, partly to get him to talk, partly because she had no idea what to say.
    "I don't think I'll cry," said Stevie.
    "I'm glad," said DeAnne.
    "I'll just make